WHEN, as a child, you have fallen asleep with names like Bahram, Freddie Fox, Mahmoud, Charlie Smirke, Dante and Billy Nevett drifting in and out of your dreams, the Derby soon becomes much more than a mere horse race.

Epsom racecourse remains high on the list of places to be visited before last orders are called, simply because it has been part of life as far back as memory stretches. Those evening descriptions of Derbys won in the days before Mr and Mrs Bridge had even met were part of the fabric of growing up.

Tales of suffragette Emily Davison throwing herself under the hooves of the King's horse in 1913; of Airborne, the last grey to win the great race; of owners from a different time, like the Maharaja of Rajpipla, Lettice Mary Miller and Jack Joel, came every June, just as the deeds of Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe would be retold whenever Test cricket was being played and Jack Dempsey or Gene Tunney would come back to life before a big fight was on the radio.

Since the first days when sport pages could be digested and the cinema newsreel meant more than an opportunity to spend a penny, England's major horse races have continued to weave a spell, none more so than the Derby.

The first Derby memory which comes back to the mind is of a thinly-smiling Sir Gordon Richards being led into the delirious winner's enclosure aboard Pinza, in Coronation Year (1953), having beaten the Queen's much-fancied colt, Aureole. It was his first success in 28 attempts at the world's greatest race.

The following year, another who did not smile overmuch, young Lester Piggott, enjoyed the first of his record nine Derby triumphs, on Never Say Die, whose American owner, Robert Stirling Clark, thought so little of his chances that he did not bother to travel.

Piggott gave an indication of the monastic way he would go through his racing life thereafter by riding the winner of the last then going home to Lambourn with his parents, cutting the lawn and being in bed soon
after nine.

The next year's Derby struck a special chord because it brought a treat. Mother, who liked the name of the French-trained and ridden Phil Drake, managed a small each-way investment with our local bookie's runner, whose "proper" job was frying fish and chips. The 99s were on Mum that afternoon.

Every year, on the first Wednesday in June, the Derby was a highlight, often causing school to be skipped and a television to be sought out to watch the drama. And, of course, to hear the peerless Peter O'Sullevan call them home.

There was major disappointment in 1962 when, carrying a precious "tanner" each way, Hethersett, owned by the Huddersfield dye manufacturer, Lionel Holliday (always "The Major"), was brought down on the descent to Tattenham Corner in the Derby won by Larkspur.

Come September, Holliday had his Classic day, when Hethersett recovered from his injuries to win the Great Voltigeur Stakes, at York, before taking the St Leger.

We were thrilled by the wonderful Sir Bird II, from France, before 1966 became the greatest summer of sport, thanks not only to That Football Match and Garfield Sobers and Seymour Nurse scoring centuries in the Headingley Test, but because Charlottown, ridden by the Australian, Scobie Breasley, carried home the family money at Epsom – despite having lost a shoe on the way down to the start, which meant the race
was delayed.

School was long gone by then, and watching the Derby became less of a problem – which was perhaps as well, because there followed a sequence of great stories and brilliant horses.

Arthur Budgett became only the second man – William I'Anson, from Middleton Quernhow, near Ripon, was the first, in the middle of the 19th century – to own and breed two Derby winners, and both were ridden by jockeys who enjoyed huge followings in the North.

Ernie Johnson triumphed on board Blakeney, in 1969, and in 1973, Morston gave Malton-based Edward Hide his Derby day, both the Budgett colts having Hethersett in their bloodlines.

The list of Derby winners for the two decades from 1967 includes some of the best horses to have won Epsom's mile-and-a-half Classic: Royal Palace, Sir Ivor, Nijinsky (officially rated the best of all Piggott's winners), Mill Reef, Grundy, The Minstrel, Shirley Heights (owned and bred by the Earl of Halifax), Troy, the late lamented Shergar, Sharastani and Reference Point.

Piggott's last Derby triumph came on Teenoso, in 1983, but family links with the race were continued in 1996 when Shaamit, trained at Newmarket by his Yorkshire-born son-in-law, William Haggas, was driven home by Michael Hills.

In 1999, Keiren Fallon began a great run for Irish jockeys when he rode Oath, Henry Cecil's fourth Derby winner. Then came Sinndar (Johnny Murtagh), Galileo (Mick Kinane), High Chaparral (Murtagh), Kris Kin and North Light (both Fallon) and Motivator (Murtagh).

Liverpudlian Martin Dwyer broke the Irish spell and gave Sir Percy – another with Hethersett in his lineage – success in the tightest of finishes in 2006, then Authorized, one of many Derby winners to have preceded their greatest moment by winning the Dante Stakes, at York, in
May, finally gave Frankie Dettori his first triumph in the great
race last June.

The best of them all? In my opinion, it would have to be Nijinsky, who rewarded his bold American owner, Charles Engelhard, and brilliant trainer, Vincent O'Brien, for their courage by being the last colt to win the fabled Triple Crown of British racing – the 2,000 Guineas, the Derby and the St Leger, in 1970.

The most fun? Undoubtedly Khayasi, who romped home for Ray Cochrane in 1988, and delighted a soaked, mud-spattered, weary and deep-in-trouble father who had cajoled wife and daughter into a fruitless, crawling search of what seemed a mile or two of rhododendrons in search of a short-cut home from their favourite woodland spot in time for the big race.

That was proof indeed that stamina is essential to be a winner on Derby Day.